Silicon Valley Mechanical (SVM) has always taken an innovative approach to growth as a business, and it began in 1994 with founder Elias Amireh.

Amireh received his degree in mechanical engineering from San Jose State University and quickly began building a loyal client base as a contractor, performing thousands of projects throughout the Bay Area for more than 20 years and consistently employing 50-70 workers. 

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In January 2014, Amireh partnered with engineers Brian Pyle, Ryan Wall and Blaine Flickner and boosted the company’s current structure to help achieve dramatic growth and become one of Silicon Valley’s largest commercial HVAC contractors in the region.

“In 2014, the shop had roughly 12,000-square-feet in shop space,” explains Jeremy Day, operations manager at SVM.  “Today we have roughly 110,000-square-feet of shop space and we employ over 680 people, and we are signatory to Local 104.”

Consistent with that growth has been the firm’s willingness to be forward thinking with company culture and investments in technology, Day explains.

“At SVM, we really take pride in the culture that we’ve made with our people,” he says. “We allow everybody here to discuss options, to discuss new technology, future tools that we may need, how we can grow as a business as well as how we can grow our culture.”

On the software side, tools have included mobile apps like ICT tracker’s construction productivity app. On the hardware side, the focus has been on what machinery best complements the company’s workflow.

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“We have more capabilities now to produce larger orders with a quick turnaround and also allows us to employ more skilled workers in our shop,” says Day about the shop’s recent metal fabrication machinery upgrades purchased from Mestek Machinery — which include Mestek’s Laser-Max fiber laser with decoiler, spot welders, corner matics, square and round forming tools, among other items. 

The additions have allowed the SVM to nearly double production since November 2018, Day says.

“We needed tools that would speed up or productivity and efficiencies,” he explains. “We also needed a company that knows exactly what we need to help us get to where we want to go in this evolving industry.”

Today SVM completes around $200 million-plus in business each year. One part of that is technology. Another part of that is culture, says Day.  

“Things that we like to focus on is making sure that everybody is happy and has a voice,” he says. “Those are very positive things that we can do as a company to reinforce back into our employees that we are not just going to treat them like a number. We are going to treat them as a person, a human being. We are going to push them forward with us in our business.”

This story originally appeared in the November 2019 issue of SNIPS magazine.